


Usque Ad Paradisum

by ameliathermopolis



Category: The White Queen (TV)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-04-27
Updated: 2014-04-27
Packaged: 2018-01-21 01:37:55
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,103
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1532921
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ameliathermopolis/pseuds/ameliathermopolis
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Prompted: When you have finished the other drabbles, may I request one of Richard and Anne's reunion in heaven? </p><p>***</p><p>Purgatory is a riverbank, through which flows a river smooth as glass. Starlight reflects in the currents, though none shine in the sky. Richard isn’t sure if there is a sky. He doesn’t look up enough to know. None of them do. </p><p>Go the riverbank and look into the water. Face yourself. Reconcile yourself to your sins. Make them a part of you, as you did not do in life. Only then will you pass the gate. Only then can you climb the ladder.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Usque Ad Paradisum

**Author's Note:**

> A pet project nearly five months in the making. I am the least prolific writer in this entire fandom, I swear. But hopefully the wait has been worth it! I took inspiration from a few different sources for the idea of the afterlife, mostly from Greco-Roman and Christian biblical doctrine. Also, this isn't strictly based on the canon of the White Queen, at the request of the person who prompted it.

Purgatory is a riverbank, through which flows a river smooth as glass. Starlight reflects in the currents, though none shine in the sky. Richard isn’t sure if there is a sky. He doesn’t look up enough to know. None of them do. 

_Go the riverbank and look into the water. Face yourself. Reconcile yourself to your sins. Make them a part of you, as you did not do in life. Only then will you pass the gate. Only then can you climb the ladder._

Even the wisest cannot tell what a man will see when he looks into the river. There are things that were, things that are, and things that never came to pass. The sins you impose on yourself become more common than the sins the Good Book speaks of. Time loses meaning, but Richard can almost measure it by the ones that come and go. There are men and women and children who come to sit by him. The children spend what may be a day there, having the purest souls available. There are those who have been there longer than anyone can remember. 

There is an old man with blood on his face that stares into the water and cries fat, silent tears. Any conversation is brief and carried out in hushed whispers, but Richard asks the woman across the way who the crying man is. 

"He was once a King. I have never asked how many coffins he had to walk past to get there." She sighs and looks back into the water. "It is a hollow crown," she says.

"Aye," Richard says. "Aye, it is."

* * *

Chaos is a ladder. After unnumbered years reliving all he had done, and all he could have done, and all he had yet to do, Richard walks away from the riverbank, casting off the grey cloak woven from the black sheep that roam unseen fields. He still wears his armor, broken and bloodied, but it doesn't feel quite so heavy. He carries no sword and wears no crown. The path to Chaos is paved in black bricks, the good intentions of the inmates of Hell scrawled on them in a loose script. Richard does not look down to read them.

_Hand over hand, rung over rung, that is the way you must go. Up the ladder, through the void and the earth, to reach the white gate. Accept the climb. Breathe the free air again. And know in your heart that there is yet a home to go to._

The wind curls around Richard like silken sheets, blowing his hair out of his eyes, lifting his feet when it feels he cannot take another step. His arms ache and he has lost feeling in his hands. Still, he grips the rungs and lifts himself another few feet, up and up and up. He climbs through the void of black that separates Purgatory from the other realms. The silence makes a home in his bones and makes his ears ring. He longs for the sound of the river or the call of a bird. There is not even a star to light his way. Though he knows he cannot be alone in his climb, he can see no one above him. He is too afraid to look down.

The sun comes back as if he is passing into dawn. The sky lightens into a soft dove gray, then pink, and then the bright red of fresh blood. Richard gasps when the sun bursts over the horizon. There is an endless expanse of earth laid out in front of him, shimmering and moving like water. The clouds are yet high above him, but he trembles to see how far from the ground he has come in darkness. The world shifts beneath him and the noise of it all is deafening.

The wind pushes him on as the sun continues to rise, slow and steady. _Home_ , he thinks. _I am going home._ The rest of the climb feels healing instead of draining. The bleeding blisters on his hands close, his strength returns. He climbs into the clouds and breathes the fresh hair and it feels like years and years of pain release him when he breathes it all out. The last rung comes as a surprise and Richard falls flat on his face when he grabs at the thin air. A child's laughter, like the tinkling of silver bells, floats to him.

“Don't worry, sir. Everyone does that.” Richard looks up at the little girl, perched high on a golden chair, a book laid out on her lap. A golden book mark runs down the page and a tall white gate stands behind her. Richard scrambles to his feet, a hot blush on his cheeks. “Richard Plantagenet, Duke of Gloucester?” the little girl asks. Richard opens his mouth to correct the title, but finds the words will not come. “I think you gave up being a King a long time before now,” she says with a smile. The gate swings open without a sound and the little girl checks off something in her book.

“You're right on schedule. Off you pop.”

* * *

Heaven is a castle on a hill. When the mists part and the sun shines clear again, Richard is standing at the edge of a garden, his back to a hedge. It is the height of summer, with flowers sprouting through thick green grass, and the pond sitting peacefully in the shade of a great tree. A girl lays on the bank, dressed in a gown of purple linen tied at the waist with white silk. Her feet are bare and her dark yellow hair falls in ringlets down to the center of her back, twisted at her temples and tied back to keep out of her eyes. One of her hands is dipped in the pond, drawing lazy circles in the water that ripple out.

Richard knows who she is, even if he doesn't have the heart to call her name. For if this was heaven, a perfect resting place of his own invention, how could he have ever thought she wouldn't be waiting for him? His vision is clouded for the briefest of moments with images of a room, heavy with incense and the smell of death. It clears with one blink. It does not do to dwell on the past. It is known to him, now.

“Are you going to stand over there all day!” Anne Neville calls to him. “I've been waiting bloody long enough that you could at least come over and say hello.” _She's not half changed,_ Richard thinks with a hysterical laugh. His feet, his body, his entire being feels lighter than he can ever remember as he walks over to her. She's laying in the shade propped up on her elbows with her ankles crossed behind her. She looks up at him with those same blue eyes he memorized long ago, and Richard finds himself holding back a sob.

“Hello, Anne,” he says in a watery voice. Her smile widens.

“Hello, Richard. I was wondering when you would get around to coming. Well, I say wondering, it was more like hoping. I thought if I just wished you here hard enough, you would have to show up eventually, and here you are!” Richard sits as she talks, crossing his legs automatically. She's so young, he thinks, so young and healthy and fresh, like he always wanted to remember her. Not like at the end.

“You wanted me here?” he asks. Anne laughs and rolls over onto her back.

“Of course I did, silly man,” she says. “What use is all this without you to share it with? And I did promise, if memory serves.” Richard tries not to stare at her and fails. She looks like she did the summer after they were married, a happy and dancing girl of sixteen that lived to love and be loved by him. _Is this mine? Forever? How could any man be so lucky?_

She had promised him, on her deathbed, that no matter how long it took, she would wait for him in heaven. Richard had not thought, in the five months after, that he would ever get a chance to see her there. The world was hell enough, then.

“Richard?” Anne prompts, snapping him out of his thoughts. “Richard, you are glad to see me, aren't you?” Richard looks down at her, her eyebrows pulled together in concern, half raised up from the ground, and starts to cry. He's cried after death before, long suspected that the river itself was made from the tears of those trapped in purgatory, but this...this is different. His entire body curls forward as his head goes into his hands and his shoulders shake with sobs. It's all so much, too much at once, and it feels like a thousand years worth of tears flow out of him and onto the grass. Anne touches his hands and gently pulls them so they are held in both of hers. Her thumbs rub soothing circles into his palms. She doesn't say anything. In life, Richard prided himself on stoicism, being a king of stone, but this was not life. “I'm sorry, my love,” Anne mutters after a moment. “It was a silly question.”

Richard sniffles and opens his eyes wide enough to look at their joined hands. There is no blood on them. Anne's face is closer than he thought when he looked up at her. The corners of her mouth are upturned in a smile, even if her eyes hold all the sympathy he missed so dearly. Her skin is ivory pale with a pink flush to her cheeks and nose, her lips red and in want of kissing. He can feel her pulse, hard and strong; an illusion perhaps, but a welcome one. Dark yellow hair tumbled down in curls to where her dress revealed the tops of her breasts, inviting his fingers to tangle in it.

“How could you think I wouldn't be happy to see you?” Richard asks when he gets his voice back. “How could you think...” he trails off, unable to find the words and unable to look anywhere but into Anne's eyes. She smiles and reaches one of her hands up to brush his cheek.

“Tongues have wagged since we last met, my love. I was beginning to doubt my own memories. You're quite the talk of the proverbial town since the Tudors took over,” she says with a smile. “Sometimes, if I look into the water long enough, it's like I can see England again. I don't know if it's better, but it is nice to see a change in things, you know? Nice to see our home move away from what it was, even if it means some things must die.” Richard stares at her for a moment, not quite knowing what to say. “Were you happy at all, after I died? I was below when it happened, but I felt you, saw that last magnificent stand of yours. I didn't see you die, Richard, but I knew. I don't know how, but I knew, and God forgive me for this, but I was so happy at the prospect of seeing you again.”

“I wanted to die sooner,” Richard mumbles. “If it weren't for the prospect of damnation, I think...I think I would have done it.” Anne's hands squeeze his, the warm bronze of her wedding band a relief against his fingers. “I never wanted to live a day beyond you. I never asked for that kind of grief.” There are no tears left to shed as he brings Anne's hands up to brush against his lips. “But that is done now, I think. I hope. More to the point, darling, what is this place?” he asks. Anne sighs and slides easily into his arms, her back against his chest, their hands still joined in her lap.

“Home,” she says. “Our home. I made it myself. Brick by brick. Do you remember when I died, Richard? What I wanted so badly?” Richard's arms tighten around her at even the mention of her death.

“You said you wished we could go back to the start. Is that was this is?” he asks.

“The best I could make it, yes. It's a little of Middleham and a little of London and, I think, a little dash of some adventure story we used to play act as children.” Her laugh is warm and washes over Richard like the summer sun. “I tried to wish Ned here, at first, but I don't think that is to be. I feel him in my heart, safe and happy, and perhaps that must be enough, do you agree?” Richard nods and presses his lips to her forehead. It doesn't hurt anymore, to think of their son. It doesn't hurt to think about anything, even the last five months where he was so alone. There's a memory of feeling in his heart, but that is all. The longer he holds Anne, the warmer he is, the more a unique brand of joy fills him up.

“You've made us a happily ever after, haven't you?” he whispers to her.

“I certainly hope so,” Anne says. There's silence after that, peaceful and serene. Richard scoots so that his back is to the tree and runs his fingers through Anne's hair, twirling each curl. Her head rests on his shoulder and her breath ghosts across his neck each time she exhales. She's so soft and gentle, he thinks, but strong. She was always strong, even when he could not be. He brushes his knuckles down her arms before continuing his explorations. The linen of her dress is soft and moves easily in the breeze, molding to her frame as if it were sewed right on her. Purple was always a royal color, and the rich plum stands out in delicious relief against her white skin. It has been so long since he's touched her, touched anyone, that he can't stop.

“Richard...” she groans against his neck when his hands reach her hips. “Richard, why haven't you kissed me?” Richard gasps when she takes one of his hands, rubbing the flat of his palm over her stomach until his thumb just brushes the underside of one breast. Anne has never been the sexual instigator of the pair of them. She accepts, encourages, meets him half way in desire and passion, but Richard learned long ago how much she needs him to express how badly she makes him want her. She looks up at him with those wide blue eyes that have entranced him since childhood, the corners of her mouth threatening to smile, and the world stands still.

One of his arms loops around her waist and turns her so that he can look at her fully. There is a part of him that still fears she is a dream, that there is a screaming void waiting for him if he closes his eyes. The world is not designed to attend to every whim of every man, after all. But as he looks at Anne, it doesn't matter. If it is a dream, then at least it is a good one.

Anne's arms go around his neck as Richard bends his head to kiss her. Her fingers find purchase in his hair as surely as her lips find his, tangling and tugging him to where she needs. Richard had forgotten what it felt like to touch another person, he realizes, as the warmth of her mouth washes over him. Forgotten what it was to hold and to share himself with another soul. _I never wanted anyone but you. No matter what the stories try to say._ The words hang unspoken around them. Anne is too preoccupied with dragging her tongue along the seam of his lips to say anything.

Anne hooks her fingers onto the front of Richard's doublet, pulling at the navy blue velvet until he moves with her. She shifts under him, spreading out on the grass before wrapping her arms around his back, fingers drumming along his spine. That doesn't hurt anymore either, Richard realizes. Everything had hurt so badly at the end, that even the twisting of his spine hadn't seemed so much a burden anymore. These thoughts leave when Anne sucks gently on this tongue.

Richard finds himself laying between his wife's legs when her heels touch the back of his knees. Her dress is pushed up nearly to her hips, her long white legs keeping him still. Though his eyes are still closed, his mouth occupied with other tasks, his hands wander at will. Anne arches her back to allow him to untie the white silk keeping the layers of her dress from being more than shapeless yards of fabric. The linen curves to every slope of her body, her breasts, her waist, the gentle swell of her hips, and Richard allows himself a moment to just stare at her. Anne giggles and wraps a hand around one of his wrists.

“Has it been so long that you've forgotten what I look like, my lord?” she says with a laugh, guiding his captive hand over the creamy expanse of one thigh before pressing his palm to the unprotected warmth between her legs. Richard bites his tongue against the boyish gasp that rises in his throat. They were married for fourteen years, had been far less than strangers to the joys of the bedchamber, and yet...and yet, he feels so much like a boy of eighteen again.

Anne opens her legs a little wider to accommodate his moving forward. His fingertips move slowly as the mental map he made of his wife's body is rewritten. She was always so warm and wet for him, especially the first year. He remembers. He remembers the scared little girl that bloomed into a woman who knew, unequivocally, what she wanted, and who had no qualms about taking it of him. A smile threatens to grace his face when she moans, his thumb pressing to the apex of her sex and rubbing in hard circles.

Richard looks away from her for a moment, glances towards the castle and back. “Are you sure you don't want to-”

“No,” Anne gasps, her right hand flashing to grab at his forearm. “No, I can't wait for you, you _know_ I can't.” Her teeth worry at the left corner of her lower lip. “Un-Unless-” The word is the last that passes her lips as Richard silences her with a kiss. There is no 'unless,' there is no excuse for anything. A thousand endearments and promises pass between them when their lips meet. The hand Anne has at Richard's arm goes to his hair when he presses two of his fingers inside her. Her squeal is muted, shouted into his mouth. The hard tug Anne gives to his hair causes sparks from his scalp to the base of his spine and this time he cannot help but smirk. Anne bites his lower lip hard in retribution.

Though there were innumerable times where Anne would drag him to the nearest stable surface and beg him to be inside her, preparation and all that rot be damned, Richard finds her tiny groans of protest at his slowness delightful. Her hips buck whenever he threatens to pull his fingers out of her completely, as if her body is trying to reclaim something that rightfully belongs to her.

She is laid out before him in invitation, open and willing in body and spirit. Richard does not remember the last time he saw her filled with such joy. There was so little of it, at the end, and not just for them. “God has forsaken this place,” she said to him, gazing out on all of England as if she could see to the edge of the world. _Perhaps God had, my love_ , he thinks, _but he never frowned upon this._

Richard's hands leave their ministrations at his wife's core to fumble with the fastenings on his breeches. Anne's soft hands push his aside after a moment, calm even as the heat from her skin seeps through the cloth to make his cock jump. Anne laughs as she tugs his breeches down around his hips, holding her tongue between her teeth.

“I'd forgotten how eager you always were, Richard. Though, to be fair, I always chalked that up to youth and quiet desperation, rather than my own desirability.” Her deft fingers close around his cock, her thumb rubbing across the ridge between the shaft and the head. Richard hisses and nearly falls forward, just catching himself on the flats of his palms.

“You...you should know better, my love. So much better, by now,” he stammers. He goes where she guides him, settling with his hips pressed against the inside of her thighs. The heat from her sex nearly blinds him as she makes just the tip of his press against her folds. “Only you. Only ever you.”

“Say it again,” she whispers, her lips at his ear. “Say it again, my love, please.”

“Only you,” he purrs as he enters her in one hard thrust. “Only you, only you, only you.” Anne's back arches and her mouth opens in a soundless cry as her head falls back on the grass.

“Oh, _Richard_ ,” she mewls. The sound is magic to her husband's ears, nearly as magic as the wonderful heat that surrounds him. He had often thought, in moments such as these, that the only heaven he ever wanted to know was inside Anne. Perhaps that had not been so off the mark.

Words, though they gather readily in Richard's mouth, fail him as he begins to move inside her. One of his hands finds purchase in the green grass, the other clasped tight with his wife's. It was never just bodily, though pleasure runs through him like the river he spent so long peering into. This act, their love...no, it was more. He knows it. He feels it. Anne's legs close around his hips and drag him into her body so hard he fears it will hurt her. Her nails drag along his neck, up her shirt to trace the curve of his spine, and always she whispers “Oh, love, love, love,” in his ear.

Richard feels as though he could sing for joy, could sink into the ground and really become one flesh with this woman beneath him, who has been the sole joy of his entire life. The garden and castle are not England, not as they knew it. Perhaps it is what it could have been: an Eden, and they shall be a new Adam and Eve.

Richard's peak comes without warning and his hips stutter as he spills inside her. The heat, that wondrous heat, and the insistence of her body to keep his cock inside her tells him that Anne has reached her pleasure, as well. Somewhere in his mind, Richard knows that the entire act cannot have taken more than a few moments, but it doesn't matter. They have life again, to fill with pleasures and passions. A proper reunion can wait until the proper bedchamber. Anne sighs and covers his face with kisses and whispered words. His arms shake, but do not give out until he slides out of her, his head falling onto her breasts.

Her heart flies against his cheek as her fingers run through his hair. The soft summer sun has moved from its zenith, making its slow way westward as it stares down at them. _In the eyes of God and angels, you are mine again,_ he swears. Time passes as he and Anne come down, hearts slowing, breaths becoming more even, and eventually Richard raises his head. Anne smiling and bends forward to kiss him.

“Come, my love,” she says, standing on legs that wobble even as she helps him up. “Come, let's go home.” Anne turns towards the castle on a hill, a palace hand made for them. Her hand holds his and she tugs. They are children yet again. Richard looks down at her and smiles.

“Home. Yes. Let us go back home, at last.”

* * *

 

_There is a red door that leads out of the house of the undying. Open it. Go through. Walk down the path. You have been here before; your feet will know the way. There is a wide world beyond that waits for you. Find a home. Or make a home. And rest._


End file.
